


herr God, herr Lucifer- beware

by snicklefritz



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, queer katja, this started as an idea about agender katja
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 11:39:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3528038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snicklefritz/pseuds/snicklefritz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's not a girl. She doesn't know what she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	herr God, herr Lucifer- beware

**Author's Note:**

> This started as an idea about agender Katja Obinger, and while I didn't explore that idea as much as I could have, I did have fun writing this. 
> 
> Title from "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath.

Her hair has always been a point of pride for her mother. It fell in soft thick curls around her face, and her mother would oh-so-carefully brush it back, gently tugging at her scalp, until it shone like a halo around her head.

When she is fifteen she chops it off herself in her girlfriend’s bathroom. Swatches of dark hair cover the sink, and they look like husks, dead things you find in the woods that cling to your clothes. Katja knows what a cliché it is, this act of teen rebellion, but it feels good, it feels right, air on the back of her neck and uneven, jagged layers hardening her features. She’s not a girl. She’s not sure what she is.

In Berlin no one looks twice at her, or her hair, not even when she dyes it in Crayola-wax colors. Katja has her guitar, has herself- she doesn’t need much else. She haunts the clubs, takes home the girls who want a taste of rock and roll, and feels nothing.

She’s on holiday in Paris- she enjoys watching the waiters squirm as they try to communicate to her in horrific German- when she collides with a girl on the street. Katja does not apologize as she awkwardly clings to the girl, trying to keep themselves both upright, calls her something appropriately rude in German, and then the stranger looks her in the eye.

They freeze. Katja is looking at a mirror of herself, same eyes, same nose, same mouth. Height, weight, build. Even their expressions of surprise look the same. The girl has Katja’s old hair style from middle school, long and curly, no style to it whatsoever, and no dye. She is dressed all in black, in a long maxi dress with a ripped denim jacket covering her arms. She looks so feminine that Katja feels a stupid urge to kiss her. How narcissistic is that?

“ _Mon Dieu_ ,” the stranger whispers. Katja is still holding onto her elbow, but she can’t let go. The stranger stares at her. “ _Une autre._ ”

***  
Danielle Fournier. Aryanna Giordanno. Janika Zingler. Danielle explains it to her in a broken mess of French and English, pulling out photographs and maps with trembling hands. Katja thinks she looks like a bird, the kind that’s just flown through a hurricane and has lost its bearings.

If Danielle looks that bad, Katja can’t imagine what she herself must look like.

“We are being watched,” Danielle whispers, her lips to Katja’s ear. Danielle turned on the tv, the radio, the shower, and the tap in Katja’s hotel room before she’d speak. “And now- _nous sont assassinés_.”

Katja returns to Berlin with a new pink phone (“It matches your hair,” Danielle joked, the only time Katja saw her smile) and a mission. Danielle has a friend in Interpol, who knows someone who knows someone with access to facial recognition software. They cast the net across the Atlantic, unsure what they’ll find, or if they even want to find anything at all. Danielle is sure that they are the only living clones left in the world, but Katja isn’t convinced.

A few hours later, Danielle sends her an email titled “ _bonjour soeur_ ” with a photo attachment of a sad-looking woman with long hair, an expensive coat on her shoulders, and a police badge around her neck. _Detective Elizabeth Childs_. Katja sounds out the name in front of her laptop, weighing the syllables on her tongue. She looks like the sort of woman Katja always hated growing up, the kind who stuck to rules like glue and never questioned the higher authority. Katja hoped she was wrong.  
***  
The cough starts a week after she contacts Beth Childs. Katja has never been religious, but if she was, she would think it was a sign from God that they were not meant to be made. 

She wants to dye her hair the color of the blood in her sink, but Danielle says that’s morbid, and Beth has found another clone in America, a scientist. Beth smiles and says “You’d like her hair.”

***  
Danielle hasn’t answered her phone or replied to her text messages or emails in sixteen hours and Katja is losing her fucking mind. She has never known fear like this, an animalistic urge to _runrunrun_ and not look back. 

Twenty hours after their last contact, Katja finally gets a message, only this time it’s a headline on a French news site. _JEUNE FEMME EST ASSASSINÉ EN APPARTEMENT_. Her own face stares back at her, labeled ‘ _victime_ ’. 

Katja runs and never looks back, the silver briefcase containing her biological building blocks tucked under her arm. She doesn’t cry. Danielle cried so much; Katja will be strong for her sister.

***  
Beth is ignoring her, which isn’t new, but Beth looks scared, and that _is_ new. When she missed the rendevous, Katja was beside herself with worry, and finally tracked Beth down to this middle of nowhere park, demanding answers. 

It’s not until she gets into the backseat that it truly hits Katja- this is wrong. Beth is wrong. Her hair is too long, her eyes too bright, her accent hitting words in the wrong places. Beth has never been frightened. Angry, yes, sad, yes, but never frightened, never frazzled. 

Katja’s never used the rhyme Danielle taught her, but it spills from her lips now, “Just one, I’m a few, no family too, who am I?” 

Beth’s eyes are wide, and her silence is her answer.

_“You’re not Beth.”_

**Author's Note:**

> French notes (I used google translate, if there are mistakes please let me know)  
> "My God"  
> "another one"  
> "We're being killed"  
> "hello sister"  
> "YOUNG WOMAN SLAIN IN APARTMENT"  
> "victim"


End file.
